


a heart spilled out in ink

by anddirtyrain



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 17:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13862949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anddirtyrain/pseuds/anddirtyrain
Summary: Clarke leaves the book under Lexa’s pillow.The neatly folded pages upon pages, her heart spilled out in ink, a gift for the woman she loves.Or,An ode to Lexa





	a heart spilled out in ink

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot believe it's been 2 years

Clarke hides the book in one of the pouches hanging from Lexa’s horse.

She’s meant to visit her mom tomorrow, and she’s staying for three weeks to help her with the clinic. It’s the longest she’s spent apart from Lexa during the past few years, and they’ve both been dreading it like Clarke dreads the long, cold days of winter. Lexa has been planning and postponing a visit to Boudalan kru for the past few months, and though their leader has been understanding, it just wouldn’t do to keep them waiting any longer. The trip would take two weeks, more or less. 

Lexa wished to come with her. Clarke wanted to go with her. They’ve been a unit for so long nothing else felt natural. But they had so very personal responsibilities, things that the other couldn’t help with, and such a small amount of time to carry them out as they fought against the passing of the seasons…Winter would arrive soon enough, and all travel would be ridiculous to attempt. And the clinic had to be ready by then, for all the births they were expecting.

It had to be done. 

And so they wake up one morning and dress separately for the first time in months and they each go their own way. (Not before pressing a parting kiss on Lexa’s lips, stealing enough breath to sustain her for the days to come.)

But before she goes, she hides the book where she knows Lexa will find it.

 

//

 

They’ve been riding for half a day when she comes across it.

Lexa calls for her guards to scout the area and for her party to dismount and rest the horses, and she does the same herself. (These days, they scout for dangerous wildlife more than for possible assassins, and she’s thankful for it.) She digs through one of the pouches hanging from Nettie -she’d let Clarke name the horse, even though it was something that wasn’t done- looking for a canteen of water, when she comes across it. 

Her fingers brush over weathered leather and soft pages, and she immediately takes the small book out. She doesn’t recognize it, and she has half a mind to be wary about it -poison in the pages, a threat written inside- it’s almost good to know that so many years of peace haven’t made her brain dull. But then then she smells it. Clarke’s perfume. The flower-water she bathes with and dabs on her neck and wrists and between her breasts every morning. It smells like Clarke.

Lexa decides water can wait, and she leaves the old horse tied to a tree while she walks a few steps away from her riders, looking for a place to sit down and open what feels like a secret. She finds a spot beneath a large tree, the roots thick and solid and the branches spreading out towards the sky, and she sits and opens it to the first page.

.

 [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161629245@N07/39708402515/in/dateposted/)

  _._

Lexa closes the notebook, breathless at the words. She almost wants to stop reading until she's back home, nestled in Clarke's arms and with walls around her, but Clarke wanted it to have her now, and either way, a force stronger than herself pushes her to keep reading.

_1._

_When you smile. Really smile. Not the smirks you give my friends now that you’re comfortable being yourself around them, but the smiles you save for me. When your eyes crinkle and your lip does this thing and I can see your teeth. You’re my Lexa, always, but that’s when I feel it the most. And I’m so grateful that you let me see you smile like that. I will always cherish it._

_2._

_When you laugh so hard you throw your head back and close your eyes. I never hear your voice get that high. It’s such a treat. It makes butterflies go crazy in my stomach._

_(I don’t mean the insects, my sweetheart, I just mean I’m so in love with you that my whole body manifests it.)_

_3._

_When I brush your hair after a long week, and I get to undo all your braids. You close your eyes and make this sound from the back of your throat that is absolutely delightful. You look so young. Sometimes I forget how young we still are._

_4._

_When we take a bath together after that._

_You already know my favorite part about those, though, don’t you?)_

_5._

_When leaders from warring communities come visit you, and you are able to undo their troubles with words when everyone else would have resorted to violence. People have called you weak for it. People have called you a visionary for it. I believe you are brave. Your compassion and your mercy and your intelligence are only a few of the qualities that I most love about you, and I am profoundly sorry if I ever took advantage of how good you are at your core, and how good you have always been to me. Know that I spend my life making sure I am worthy of it._

_6._

_How you swallowed your pride and let me teach you how to read. I know you were embarrassed, especially when I told you that it’s something people learn when they are children, but you let me do it. (And didn’t that come in handy right now?)_

_7._

_That just got me thinking, I love how your nose scrunches when you’re concentrating. It’s adorable._

 

Lexa closes the book and looks up, almost expecting the rest of the traveling party to be staring at her. 

She’s come to accept after years with Clarke at her side that love isn’t weakness, but it’s still hard to reject what’s been ingrained in her since she has use of reason. The book in her hands is proof of it all. It feel as though she’s holding Clarke’s love, can carry it with her in a more tangible way than the drawings she keeps under lock and key in her rooms at Polis. She’s terrified anyone else will find it, even if they will not be able to understand it.

It feels precious. Sacred.

It’s one thing to hear Clarke whispers those things in her ear, but it’s rather different to have it put on ink and paper. To be able to access the words and the feelings behind them at her ease. She also feels something very delicate inside her shiver at the thought of what spurred on this show of affection.

It had been a difficult day, those that didn’t come around very often anymore.

Clarke had been there, in the throne room, and she’d seen her execute a man. Capital punishment wasn’t applied as often anymore, but there had been no other way to ensure the safety of the village he came from. Clarke had said she understood, that night. That she knew Lexa tried to do things differently now but that she understood, and she agreed with her actions. 

“If those children had been ours, I wouldn’t have waited for your judgment, I would have killed him myself,” Clarke had said. 

It didn’t put her at ease. 

She could still feel the thickness of blood in her fingertips, the smell of it, like rust and metal. And she feared that Clarke would feel it too. (Even after so many deaths at her hand, it never did feel normal to her, taking a life.) 

But it hadn’t been just that. It had been what came before too…she’d failed. As Heda. As a leader. Lives were lost and she felt it keenly, and even more so because they were so young. If she’d only acted sooner or differently, then maybe it could have been avoided. But all that was left for her to do was enforce punishment.

She felt as though she was made of ice. Of steel. A cold, dead thing; dangerous and deadly. It was how she felt those years after Costia, how Titus had raised her to be. Heda, and nothing more.

“Sometime I fear there aren’t enough reasons,” she’d told Clarke, her throat tight, her fingers trained on the floor. 

“Enough reasons for what?” Clarke had asked, her hands just as gentle as they’d always been on her shoulders, her front pressed to Lexa’s back as she knelt behind her while she sat on their bed.

“Enough reasons for you to love me,” she’d said, and Clarke had quieted her words with kisses, and caresses, and then she’d whispered:

“You are the reason, Lexa.”

She hadn’t quite understood it, back then. 

But now, as she clutches the book tighter before opening its pages again -she thinks she understands.

 

 

1 _8._

_I love it when you kiss me awake in the morning. I can’t think of a better way to start my day._

_19._

_I love your hands._

_20._

_I love your fingers._

_21._

_I love the lines in your palm._

_22._

_I love the strength reflected in every tendon. I want to ask my mom to bring my one of the anatomy books that made it to earth, so I can find a diagram of the human hand and name every single part. I love them all._

_23._

_How your hands can be so strong to deliver justice, and to fight, and to protect. How they’re calloused and hardened from a life of fighting._

_24._

_How your hands can be so gentle when they hold a flower a child has brought you as a gift. When they hold a newborn baby. When you say hello to villagers who have traveled miles and miles to meet you._

_25._

_I love how you touch me with those hands, Lexa. I love how you feel inside of me. You know that, don’t you?_

 

 

Lexa feels her face warm, and she hates that as winter approaches the sun is around less and less, so she cannot even blame it on the heat. 

She gets up, puts the book away, and they resume their journey.

 

//

 

The place is buzzing when Clarke gets there.

New Arkadia doesn’t feel different from Polis, in that way. There are children playing and running, and people going places, animals getting fed and shops opening. Mornings are the same everywhere, Clarke guesses.

She goes straight to her mother, and though Polis is home in every way that counts, she relishes every second of her embrace. Through the years, somehow, they found a way to see eye to eye. And it’s simple now, to just be her daughter.

It’s only a few hours ride to New Arkadia, though after over a decade she guesses it’s no longer new. And it’s no longer only sky people, arkers. Children grew up. The people that survived moved forward. They were marriages, babies. It was a matter of time before they merged themselves so fully with the grounders that you could no longer tell who was who, since they’d adopted the tattoos the grounders wore and learned their language.

She heads to the room she and Lexa share when they visit New Arkadia, and though it was a short trip, she can feel exhaustion claw at her bones.

She doesn't want to admit she's getting older, but she is. She can feel it. She sees it in the deepening lines in her mothe's face and the gaggle of children (five of them now) that follow Octavia and Lincoln wherever they go. Time has passed.

And she's passed it by Lexa's side.

She briefly wonders if Lexa has found the book she wrote so carefully over so many days. Sleep takes her before she can think about what her beautiful woman thought of it.

 

//

 

_49._

_Let’s go back to the start shall we? I can’t say that I loved you back then we first met. But you left an impression. I was expecting an old man sitting in a throne, and what I got was you -a beautiful girl with eyes the color of the forest foliage and slender, deadly hands twirling a blade. It threw me. Maybe our love wasn’t at first sight, but it only took one look for my heart to notice you. I love your presence, Lexa. I love the way you fill up a room._

_50._

 

_After what happened with the Pauna -I loved you a little then._

_51._

_I love how protective you are. I feel safe when I’m with you, always. From the start. And I know we have yet to sit down and make plans, and that there are a lot of decisions to be made, but it makes me think of how you’ll be with our children, if we have them, some day. They’ll be the safest people in Polis, maybe even earth._

_(I think we should talk about that when you get back.)_

 

Lexa stops reading for a second time. She thinks she knows what that means, and it takes her breath away. No Commander has ever...then again, she's sure no Commander has been as happy and loved as she has.


End file.
